“Punching above their weight”: NAPLAN metaphors
How are economically disadvantaged communities and schools portrayed in news stories about school results in the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) assessments? In one case, a news story used the metaphor, ‘punching well above their weight’, when referring to the NAPLAN results of ‘disadvantaged’ schools. This metaphor represents schools in locations of poverty as performing poorly on NAPLAN by implying that any NAPLAN success is unusual or an exceptional variance. Recent research by Dr Aspa Baroutsis has investigated the use of metaphors in news stories about the NAPLAN performance of schools in locations of poverty in the Australian print media over the last 10 years. Read More
